God knows the choices, the options we his creations are given, and He has the Inability to kil steal and destroy even what He created.
example satan.
the choices we make are our own, like a human parent grieves when their child makes a mistake and doesnt listen God our father also grieves for us and our error in not listening.
since his first adam chose to sin it is now OUR option, and God does not control what we do.
he loves us and Jesus guides us. they do know what can happen if we play in the street and they do know a car is coming and they do know if we do not move we could die.
so do we. and it is our choice to listen to HIM say go away do not do it stop!!!
at a certain point people must realize God loves us so much it is up to us to love HIM now.
the plan states the kingdom is not in this day and age.. Jesus is not with us in person because He is preparing a place for us to live in that will be safe and no concerns.
till then as much as they do KNOW what the road may mean for god or evil it is up to each person to decide which path to take.
I think God does "lock up the chemicals" for us. but in the kingdom, not now. Now we need to chose who we will worship whether we will go with the loving God and meet Jesus Christ in the kingdom , whether we will heed His voice then or now is up to each of us TODAY>
when we are all safe and no harm can or will come to us it will be to late to chose what life we wanted for or aginst the true God.
we can worship who we please it is a choice, today, some day All knees will bow to Jesus christ! but not today today God allows US to chose what will happen by how much we include his will in our life and by how much the enemy messes with our life.
Are you also now saying he is not all powerful? God doesn't have the ability to do harm, but can create something that can but for some reason is not responsible for his creation?
If you own a dog that becomes rabid you have the tell-tail signs. Why would you let it out the door??? Rabid dogs show signs that are very apparent. The dog would probably bite you before you ever let it out.
Yes, the rabid dog scenario is an analogy; the dog being the devil. So, indeed, why was he "let out the door"? It certainly would have been known beforehand what the outcome was going to be.
God by His own rules can not Stop Satan ,today, we gave him rulership (adam did in the garden) thus we needed a Saviour from his rulership. hence Jesus christ
but it is a fight Satan is a power also and while he may not be able to hurt God he did kill his only begotten Son.
and we are in harms way as well so a plan is set forth with choices for us to chose whom we will fight the good fight with. today God has the limits that adam chose for mankind when he ate of the tree and jesus is trying to make a new kingdom where the enemy wont be such a problem. BOTH of these men made FREE WILL decisions to obey God the father or NOT! ?SEE?? God did and does give us all free will and honors it.
no God is not responsible for satan being able to destroy his creation that was the first adams choice to allow him to influence him and we all have had the problems since. but some day if we believe God raised Jesus christ we can live in a place that does not these issues. namely the kingdom when christ returns to rule .
It is the first adams choice that brought all these problem on mankind and it is the second adams redemption(jesus christ) and death that will destroy the problem and take us into a new world kingdom without these issues.
God has made Jesus christ KING for now in the kingdom UNTILL satan is burned up and done with.
WE need Jesus Christ to defeat this enemy , He is the only one who listened and gave up HIS LIFE in obedience to God so God allows him the safety and protection of us now. He knows how man thinks and is how life is he lived with us as a man.
it was then and is today today all up to a man the shape we are in.
the bible is not a short story.
if you believe Jesus christ is God this can be confusing for you, i do not.
1Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing? 2The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD, and against his anointed, saying, 3Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us. 4He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision. 5Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure. 6Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion.
yep Jesus is King, and He will hand over His kingdom for God to rule one day when death is destroyed.
In the kingdom it will be God and Jesus Christ , Jesus will be our KING then when it is over Jesus will hand the kingdom over to God. but he will still be Jesus christ our messiah .
this will take some study on your part. Indeed the lord did win a ong time ago.
And, behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with me, to give every man according as his work shall be. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last.
19For this is thankworthy, if a man for conscience toward God endure grief, suffering wrongfully. 20For what glory is it, if, when ye be buffeted for your faults, ye shall take it patiently? but if, when ye do well, and suffer for it, ye take it patiently, this is acceptable with God. 21For even hereunto were ye called: because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow his steps
If you really want to see the problem with omniscience, try imagining you're God. You know all things. You know the entire future. You know everything you will eventually do. There is nothing you can do to change your own future. If you try to change the future, it is already known to you that you would do that and the future you know already accounts for that. It's like living in a movie you've seen a thousand times -- nothing you do can change the outcome of the movie that you've seen over and over again.
i think that perhaps it helps to consider whether future and past exists at all
if not, then God's all knowing then becomes a matter of knowing all what is..now
past and future both exist in the present....and thats it
and our addictions to the illusion of past and future is a major part of our brokenness
...just sayin...
Maybe this could be? Do you believe suffering is an illusion?
Maybe life just is suffering? Maybe it is just part of being alive?
Ever hear of being "in the moment"? This is how God could experience all of time, in a moment.
When we watch a movie, we don't see the individual frames, because they are changing faster than our brains can take in as a single moment.
God not only sees what could be next, He sees what isn't going to be too. He sees how an infinite number of possibilities play out.
This reality is the one he has chosen for you to live.
I think GT has a good grip on it there and all of you guys are on to something, but perhaps the medium of the analogy needs to change. Instead of a film which is currently running with a past, present and future, look at as a painting.
Sorry for those of you who can't follow analogies (there seems to be a number of you on here) but bear with me. This one is simple.
For God this painting that he has created is called "The History of the Universe." From our perspective, we have a past and a present and a future. We can look at our peripheral past and see some of the other choices that we think we could have made and see the past as best as we can recall. We can look at our peripheral future and look at what seems to be our possible options and directions to take. From our puny finite perspective the past and the future go on infinitely.
For God though, "a day is as a thousand years and a thousand years as a day" (for you Bible fans) and as an omniscient, omnipresent artist (read creator), he sees it all like a canvas hung on the wall. To God, while he may care for your perspective in your suffering, or maybe not, he sees it less as suffering and more like two intersecting brush strokes. It is a small, nearly insignificant, yet integral and necessary detail in the larger scheme or composition of the painting of the history of the universe.
From our perspective we have choices and have lives that start and go on and stop, we live and move within the past and future inside this universe, but to God this infinite multi-dimensional space we are a spec within, is just a two dimensional work of art, in-finite. A masterpiece if you will.
Perhaps you don't like that. "But wait, an all loving God wouldn't paint this scene of putrid hell that I live in!" Well, putrid hell is a relative term. One person's putrid hell is another person's day in the park. To God it is just the sixth day in which he decided to clear his palette, mix all the beautiful colors of the spectrum together to get a nice muddy grey brown, and he painted our lives or just "life". He thought this work needed more dirt. Your poor hellacious existence is really not all that bad, especially to God who sees it all as one, he sees the bigger picture, and as a composition of color and light and dark and line and space and tension and texture. From our perspective he is all love. We are part of all of his creation. He is all love because he loves it all. Like a painter stepping back to see his work, he does so and says "It is very good," and he loves it. After all it is something he made and he is really happy with it...all of it, life, death and everything inbetween.
We are in the everpresent moment, the moment of truth for us, and within an already completed work. That is, of course, if there is a God and if this god is omniscient. There may be an infinite number of other possibilities which may also be true, or be true instead.
24Then cometh the end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father; when he shall have put down all rule and all authority and power. 25For he must reign, till he hath put all enemies under his feet. 26The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death. 27For he hath put all things under his feet. But when he saith all things are put under him, it is manifest that he is excepted, which did put all things under him. 28And when all things shall be subdued unto him, then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all.
I think suffering results from human action, or even inaction. There is a great lack of concern towards those outside our little sphere.
When I think about people who suffer, I see people with horrible diseases, people who must live and die in extreme poverty, children who go without basic needs. I feel this is happening because humanity is concerned with what happenes to them and theirs, without a thought to the bigger picture. We are too greedy and/or paranoid to live a life that any God would design. So, while I believe in a Christian God, and I look to him for guidance, when it comes to suffering, I don't think we should look to religion. I take a more Diest approach and believe humanity causes suffering, and through logic and reason, can alleviate suffering.
the bible is the word of god in it there are outlined guides for us to follow.
even hygiene.
its not my opinion, its gods. thats all there is to it.
No, there's quite a bit more to it. Aide from the fact that not everybody here even accepts the bible as divinely inspired, let alone inerrant, even among the bible fans there's a difference of opinion as to what it means. Answers like yours are usually a feeble attempt to end discussion, not encourage it.
"i jehovah, am your god,...Isaiah.48:17,18}..."all scripture is inspired of god and beneficial for teaching, for reproving, for setting things straight
for disciplining in righteousness" {2 timothy.3:16}..."trust in jehovah with all your heart and do not lean upon your own understanding. in all your ways
take notice of him, and he himself will make your paths staight" {proverbs.3:5,6}
Is that the New World Translation that I see? How're things at the JWO board?
i stand by my original post.
starbird x x x
Of course you do
im not here to pass judgement on anyone i'm not worthy to pass judgement.
i've already learnt what i need to learn. from the bible.
So you can't learn anything from what is discussed here?
i am here to dicuss, thats what we're doing now isnt it?
Well, that's what some of us are doing anyway
as i've already said its not my opinion i'm giving, its gods, everything i say can be found
in the bible.
So nice to be where you are spiritually.
difference in opinion is what makes these boards interesting. therefore a disscusion starts.
I think suffering results from human action, or even inaction. There is a great lack of concern towards those outside our little sphere.
i wonder if it might be helpful to attempt to differentiate between universal suffering and human injustice
because grass also suffers when the sun is too hot
and the antelope suffers when a croc grabs it and drags it under
just as a mother suffers giving birth to a child
who also suffers from the misconception that it is dying
which, i think, points to my point about how we commonly define suffering by drawing various lines
...when ultimately, suffering is a constant everywhere kinda thing, in all its spectrums and degrees
this, i believe, is often the level of suffering being addressed in spiritual texts such as the Bible's new testament
especially considering how most of the saints and writers of old were monks and contemplatives who were deeply interested in the broader questions of existence
and the common conclusion was that the nature of the universe is basically a great glorious woundedness
where our "evolution" is also our moving through various stages of responding to this constant state of suffering that is going on everywhere
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sirguessalot
i think that perhaps it helps to consider whether future and past exists at all
if not, then God's all knowing then becomes a matter of knowing all what is..now
past and future both exist in the present....and thats it
and our addictions to the illusion of past and future is a major part of our brokenness
...just sayin...
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pond
God knows the choices, the options we his creations are given, and He has the Inability to kil steal and destroy even what He created.
example satan.
the choices we make are our own, like a human parent grieves when their child makes a mistake and doesnt listen God our father also grieves for us and our error in not listening.
since his first adam chose to sin it is now OUR option, and God does not control what we do.
he loves us and Jesus guides us. they do know what can happen if we play in the street and they do know a car is coming and they do know if we do not move we could die.
so do we. and it is our choice to listen to HIM say go away do not do it stop!!!
at a certain point people must realize God loves us so much it is up to us to love HIM now.
the plan states the kingdom is not in this day and age.. Jesus is not with us in person because He is preparing a place for us to live in that will be safe and no concerns.
till then as much as they do KNOW what the road may mean for god or evil it is up to each person to decide which path to take.
I think God does "lock up the chemicals" for us. but in the kingdom, not now. Now we need to chose who we will worship whether we will go with the loving God and meet Jesus Christ in the kingdom , whether we will heed His voice then or now is up to each of us TODAY>
when we are all safe and no harm can or will come to us it will be to late to chose what life we wanted for or aginst the true God.
we can worship who we please it is a choice, today, some day All knees will bow to Jesus christ! but not today today God allows US to chose what will happen by how much we include his will in our life and by how much the enemy messes with our life.
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Lizzy
Maybe this could be? Do you believe suffering is an illusion?
Maybe life just is suffering? Maybe it is just part of being alive?
It is only human to try to find the cause though. It is only human to try to find a responsible party for what what we don't like.
We need to place blame?
We need to find answers to all our questions which is so good. It is not good though to blindly follow what others think the answers are.
Not good to just accept what they say.
We should question everything. It is healthy. That is what this life is teaching me.
Does God cause suffering is a good question and how each person answers this reveals a lot. I think so anyway.
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GT
Can't really follow what you're saying pond.
Are you saying God is not omnisciencent?
Are you also now saying he is not all powerful? God doesn't have the ability to do harm, but can create something that can but for some reason is not responsible for his creation?
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DrtyDzn
When we watch a movie, we don't see the individual frames, because they are changing faster than our brains can take in as a single moment.
God not only sees what could be next, He sees what isn't going to be too. He sees how an infinite number of possibilities play out.
This reality is the one he has chosen for you to live.
Jerry
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Ductape
omnisciencent
Interesting my limited free online dictionary refuses to define and it's not found in the bible.
So, how about defining terms, so the slow among us (me) might keep up.
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Free Soul
Sogwap said-
If you own a dog that becomes rabid you have the tell-tail signs. Why would you let it out the door??? Rabid dogs show signs that are very apparent. The dog would probably bite you before you ever let it out.
Yes, the rabid dog scenario is an analogy; the dog being the devil. So, indeed, why was he "let out the door"? It certainly would have been known beforehand what the outcome was going to be.
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waysider
Omniscient--------Having infinate awareness,understanding and insight.
The Merriam Webster Dictionary
God is "all-knowing".
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sirguessalot
no, not really
like i have been saying...suffering is the underlying texture/nature/essence of ALL matter/life/reality/experience...yada yada yada
i believe we are typically radically selective in how we define suffering (and pain and sin and other such things)
and this tendency for incredible degrees of exclusiveness is a form of illusion
where our capacity to feel and experience depths and degrees of suffering is pretty much handicapped
again, to rephrase the question bit...
...does suffering cause God?
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pond
God by His own rules can not Stop Satan ,today, we gave him rulership (adam did in the garden) thus we needed a Saviour from his rulership. hence Jesus christ
but it is a fight Satan is a power also and while he may not be able to hurt God he did kill his only begotten Son.
and we are in harms way as well so a plan is set forth with choices for us to chose whom we will fight the good fight with. today God has the limits that adam chose for mankind when he ate of the tree and jesus is trying to make a new kingdom where the enemy wont be such a problem. BOTH of these men made FREE WILL decisions to obey God the father or NOT! ?SEE?? God did and does give us all free will and honors it.
no God is not responsible for satan being able to destroy his creation that was the first adams choice to allow him to influence him and we all have had the problems since. but some day if we believe God raised Jesus christ we can live in a place that does not these issues. namely the kingdom when christ returns to rule .
It is the first adams choice that brought all these problem on mankind and it is the second adams redemption(jesus christ) and death that will destroy the problem and take us into a new world kingdom without these issues.
God has made Jesus christ KING for now in the kingdom UNTILL satan is burned up and done with.
WE need Jesus Christ to defeat this enemy , He is the only one who listened and gave up HIS LIFE in obedience to God so God allows him the safety and protection of us now. He knows how man thinks and is how life is he lived with us as a man.
it was then and is today today all up to a man the shape we are in.
the bible is not a short story.
if you believe Jesus christ is God this can be confusing for you, i do not.
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cman
yeah, yeah, pond we all know what pfal says
tell me pond how do you see these verses?????
1Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing? 2The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD, and against his anointed, saying, 3Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us. 4He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision. 5Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure. 6Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion.
especially the last one in bold
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cman
might want to notice God calls the Lord my king
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pond
the Lord is Jesus Christ and God did set him on the hill in Zion as KiNG .
He did appoint HIS king for the people . in fact he is "king of KINGS"
Jesus Christ always does his fathers will .
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cman
add a word
change a word
ain't no word left
Jesus Christ is King-Period
just look at it as a paragraph
the Lord won
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pond
yep Jesus is King, and He will hand over His kingdom for God to rule one day when death is destroyed.
In the kingdom it will be God and Jesus Christ , Jesus will be our KING then when it is over Jesus will hand the kingdom over to God. but he will still be Jesus christ our messiah .
this will take some study on your part. Indeed the lord did win a ong time ago.
But not all will believe it.
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cman
back to topic
though i never left
as his work shall be-
interesting phrase here huh
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pond
the topic is suffering
i cant communicate with you cman youmake no sense in your writing to me. try sirguessalot.
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cman
you don't understand the suffering of Jesus?
you wrote a little about it
and the topic is
'does god cause suffering'
19For this is thankworthy, if a man for conscience toward God endure grief, suffering wrongfully. 20For what glory is it, if, when ye be buffeted for your faults, ye shall take it patiently? but if, when ye do well, and suffer for it, ye take it patiently, this is acceptable with God. 21For even hereunto were ye called: because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow his steps
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lindyhopper
I think GT has a good grip on it there and all of you guys are on to something, but perhaps the medium of the analogy needs to change. Instead of a film which is currently running with a past, present and future, look at as a painting.
Sorry for those of you who can't follow analogies (there seems to be a number of you on here) but bear with me. This one is simple.
For God this painting that he has created is called "The History of the Universe." From our perspective, we have a past and a present and a future. We can look at our peripheral past and see some of the other choices that we think we could have made and see the past as best as we can recall. We can look at our peripheral future and look at what seems to be our possible options and directions to take. From our puny finite perspective the past and the future go on infinitely.
For God though, "a day is as a thousand years and a thousand years as a day" (for you Bible fans) and as an omniscient, omnipresent artist (read creator), he sees it all like a canvas hung on the wall. To God, while he may care for your perspective in your suffering, or maybe not, he sees it less as suffering and more like two intersecting brush strokes. It is a small, nearly insignificant, yet integral and necessary detail in the larger scheme or composition of the painting of the history of the universe.
From our perspective we have choices and have lives that start and go on and stop, we live and move within the past and future inside this universe, but to God this infinite multi-dimensional space we are a spec within, is just a two dimensional work of art, in-finite. A masterpiece if you will.
Perhaps you don't like that. "But wait, an all loving God wouldn't paint this scene of putrid hell that I live in!" Well, putrid hell is a relative term. One person's putrid hell is another person's day in the park. To God it is just the sixth day in which he decided to clear his palette, mix all the beautiful colors of the spectrum together to get a nice muddy grey brown, and he painted our lives or just "life". He thought this work needed more dirt. Your poor hellacious existence is really not all that bad, especially to God who sees it all as one, he sees the bigger picture, and as a composition of color and light and dark and line and space and tension and texture. From our perspective he is all love. We are part of all of his creation. He is all love because he loves it all. Like a painter stepping back to see his work, he does so and says "It is very good," and he loves it. After all it is something he made and he is really happy with it...all of it, life, death and everything inbetween.
We are in the everpresent moment, the moment of truth for us, and within an already completed work. That is, of course, if there is a God and if this god is omniscient. There may be an infinite number of other possibilities which may also be true, or be true instead.
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cman
24Then cometh the end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father; when he shall have put down all rule and all authority and power. 25For he must reign, till he hath put all enemies under his feet. 26The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death. 27For he hath put all things under his feet. But when he saith all things are put under him, it is manifest that he is excepted, which did put all things under him. 28And when all things shall be subdued unto him, then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all.
and when is this 'end'?
i reckon you refered to these verses pond
what is the 'all enemies'?
is death defeated or not?
did Jesus die without purpose?
why is it that some wait for a 'second coming'
when it already happened?
who is this God that may be all in all?
huh? where does it say this God is?
is this the God that said -
'thou shalt surely die'
and if dead then what is death
did Jesus Christ redeem everyone or just a few?
is God a respector of persons?
the conditions have been filled
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VeganXTC
I think suffering results from human action, or even inaction. There is a great lack of concern towards those outside our little sphere.
When I think about people who suffer, I see people with horrible diseases, people who must live and die in extreme poverty, children who go without basic needs. I feel this is happening because humanity is concerned with what happenes to them and theirs, without a thought to the bigger picture. We are too greedy and/or paranoid to live a life that any God would design. So, while I believe in a Christian God, and I look to him for guidance, when it comes to suffering, I don't think we should look to religion. I take a more Diest approach and believe humanity causes suffering, and through logic and reason, can alleviate suffering.
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Oakspear
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sirguessalot
i wonder if it might be helpful to attempt to differentiate between universal suffering and human injustice
because grass also suffers when the sun is too hot
and the antelope suffers when a croc grabs it and drags it under
just as a mother suffers giving birth to a child
who also suffers from the misconception that it is dying
which, i think, points to my point about how we commonly define suffering by drawing various lines
...when ultimately, suffering is a constant everywhere kinda thing, in all its spectrums and degrees
this, i believe, is often the level of suffering being addressed in spiritual texts such as the Bible's new testament
especially considering how most of the saints and writers of old were monks and contemplatives who were deeply interested in the broader questions of existence
and the common conclusion was that the nature of the universe is basically a great glorious woundedness
where our "evolution" is also our moving through various stages of responding to this constant state of suffering that is going on everywhere
and in everything
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cman
since all suffer in way or another
including Jesus btw
wouldn't it be a great lack in us to not experiece this?
speaking of your universal suffering sirg
if everything was 'poof' no suffering
what would be our shape and form?
part of a bigger scope of life i think
and perhaps even an art
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